the outtakes
breathing
Listen-are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?
- Mary Oliver
o.o.o
In another life, he'd been a poet. Not a very good one, mind, but a poet nonetheless, possessed by a tranquility of mind that lent itself well to seeing the beauty in all things. He'd liked Whitman. Still does, although now he can't read Leaves of Grass without a twinge of cynicism that creeps like ever-slow, rolling fog through his psyche. He likes Walt Whitman's poetry, but since his heart stopped, Alistair could not feel the poetry the way he had in his human life. The words are just words - pretty ones, rife with symbolism and allusion, but still simple words that no longer have the ability to move his soul the way they once did.
Vampirism had stolen the heart right from Alistair's chest - and in its wake, had left nothing but a lingering sense of incomplete, forlorn misery. Day in, day out. Creeping grayness, everything in monotone. Depression. He did not trust himself - he is so capable of unspeakable, unfathomable violence when the thirst wallows in his throat like swallowed shards of glass - let alone any that cross his path. There are the gifted, of course, not to be trusted for they poke fingers into the pink cavity of the mind and play as a child does with mud; but also there are the ungifted, the less restrained of their breed, cruel and callous. Alistair had not crossed a single vampire that he could remotely stand since he had woken to this hell-burning life - with the dubious exception of Carlisle Cullen, who he did not believe could remain good for so long.
And he is right - he knows he is right. Feels it deep in his deadened sinew. The proof is standing across the room, an unimaginable demon dressed as a miracle. Unnatural. The girl is unnatural.
Carlisle calls her Bella - fondly, as a father might call a child. Bella, the mate of the eldest son. Bella, the daughter of the damnable, power-craven Volturi King Aro. Bella, the too-powerfully gifted. Bella, the unnatural child, an impossibility of vampirism with a heart beat, with a heat signature, with eyes green as springtime pastures in the English countryside.
Alistair does not hide his loathing, his mistrust. He argues with Carlisle about her - threatens to leave even in the face of this convoluted war brewing to the north of Carlisle's territory.
His old acquaintance weedles him to stay by reminding him of a favor long-owed. It does not endear him to Alistair in the slightest - but even if his is a monster forever roaming this forsaken planet with a dead heart and his own shroud of gloominess, he is a monster who still possesses some iota of honor.
So he stays, but he stays in the shadows, in the attic, in the trees - he stays far away, where he rightfully belongs, sulking in the implausibility slinking right under his nose.
And that is why it takes him so long to realize that his deadened heart had turned over - just the once.
o.o.o
o.o.o
Jane didn't anticipate liking the half-breed she'd been assigned to babysit - and in spite of herself, she does like the girl. This progeny of Master Aro's is the type that batters down carefully constructed walls with all the blasé casualty of the autumn chill stealing leaves from trees - inevitable, as if by rote. The half-breed girl insists on being called by the diminutive of her name, her brow furrowing in irritation when Dimitri insists on using formal titles, and easing when Felix finally compromises. Jane hadn't expected that. She'd thought, of course, that the girl would lord her position over the Volturi guard - not an unreasonable assumption given the way that same girl had practically demanded aid from the Masters, inserting herself into a political regime several times older and more powerful than herself.
Well - perhaps not as powerful. Jane would not admit it even under the threat of torture, but Bella is not to be trifled with. The fact that Jane intentionally stokes the half-breed's ire in targeting her mate is a product only of necessity. Jane was not prone to putting herself into the direct path of danger and Bella was nothing if not dangerous. It's incredibly obvious to anyone with eyes that she is more than a formidable opponent; that power, coupled with a significant degree of plain intelligence, and a streak of tenacity that puts Master Caius to shame is nothing short of lethal.
And yet, the little half-breed is unassuming.
For Jane, this is unfathomable - nearly as unfathomable as the other thing.
The thing she is not thinking about.
Except, of course, for the times that she is thinking about it - about him.
Had she truly never run across him in her three hundred years of life? The Volturi knew all vampires on the planet if they lived long enough - between summons and their travels, various Volturi guards had encountered most, if not all, vampires on Earth, and Master Aro knew of them via his gift. And yet, Jane did not know of Alistair until he had arrived on the heels of some of the oldest European nomads that tended to roam the British Isles.
Alistair.
Jane isn't stupid, nor is she blind. She knows what he is to her - this strange vampire with deep blond hair curling around his cheekbones and eyes such a dark red they might as well be black, purple-irises pressed in the sockets beneath perpetually furrowed brows, and a distinctly uncomfortable air as he sticks to the edge of the crowd of allies. She can't place what his physical age might have been, though she supposes it is closer to twenty than fifteen, like herself and her twin. He is tall, but not thin; his human life must have seen to some measure of physical labor.
She hates that she thinks about him constantly, always on the edge of her awareness, just like her gift.
She hates more that the mind-reader knows. His knowledge might be why it is so easy for her to scratch pain down his spine when she steps into Bella's training. Not that she would admit to that, of course.
It is almost a relief when her brother arrives. Almost. Alec - of course - picks up on the radical change of Jane's attentiveness within minutes of being in her presence. They did not think it was a gift, but rather just an extension of the twin bond they had shared since the womb. For as long as Jane could remember, she and Alec had simply been extremely aware of the other. When Jane had been strapped to the pyre with flames licking at her feet, it had been Alec who had screamed in pain - her pain, which he felt for himself even though he was not suspected of being a thrice-damned witch.
Still, she levels a narrow-eyed look at him when his brows twitch upward and drags him away from the group under the guise of catching him up on the strategy that Master Aro's half-breed granddaughter had seemed to settle on - but her accursed gaze flicks over her shoulder, one lingering look to Alistair's angular profile as he sulks in the nearest shadow, before she forces herself forward. Her lungs feel tighter each steps she takes away.
Does he feel it too?
Jane rather hopes not. Part of her thinks that the whole thing is a fluke -
It's not.
o.o.o
o.o.o
She wears a pitch-black cloak that does little to mask her diminutive stature and wears her ash-blonde hair in a tightly-coiled bun atop her head, which only serves to show off the small, sharp angles of her cheekbones and proudly display the bright rubies in place of her eyes - eyes that glint with malice just as easily as they glimmer with curiosity.
He's been watching her. He can tell the difference. Right now, Jane of the Volturi is curious - about him. Alistair feels a prickle of unease. Even he has heard of her reputation, along with that of her smirking git of a twin. Every vampire to ever cross the Volturi had heard of the witch-twins - none of them had anything good to say.
Alistair edges away, keeping his back to the tree behind him and the quickest escape routes in sight. If he had to, it would be fastest to run right past those foul-smelling beasts calling themselves werewolves-
"You aren't participating in the training," she observes as she stops several feet away from him, tilting her chin back to make up for the disparity in their heights, though doing so does not elevate his confidence in the slightest. She's gifted. He has no chance of taking her on -
Something in his mind prickles at the very thought. Absurd.
His lungs expand in false confidence. "I do not care to."
Jane glances at the training going on around them, at the easy violence of the supernatural with an ease that spoke to her comfort with calamity. He isn't surprised; she's a bold little thing and he'd seen what she did the with unnatural girl and her mate the day before, baiting power with the torture of her gaze. Alistair had been perturbed to discover he'd felt a mild concern for this Volturi guard with the impassive face and tiny hands; he'd had to fight against the urge to put himself between her and Bella. He's very much not going to wonder at that reaction.
"Why are you here if you will not train with the rest. Don't you care to win?"
Alistair feels his lips curl away from his teeth in distaste, the only other emotion he is apt to show aside from antipathy. "I owe the great ponce, don't I? Talked an entire village out of burning me to ashes when I was a newborn. Saved me the trouble of attracting attention from your lot."
Jane bristles. "The Volturi are not evil."
Alistair stares at the waif blankly.
"Master Aro saved us too, from the witch burnings," she explains after a moment. "We owe him a great deal, our continued existence being just the tip of the iceberg-"
"Unless he instigated them, orchestrated it all just to nab you and your brother," Alistair interrupts, spurred on by an inexplicable sense of fury to hear this intrusive little thing talk about the Volturi with any measure of positivity. He'd heard quite enough about their brand of mercy.
"Master Aro wouldn't do that."
Alistair feels himself leaning forward, just the slightest bit, his muscles taut with an unnamed tension. Part of him is surprised that they are sustaining a conversation for so long, that he is willing to entertain this little exercise of thought, that he is bent on challenging her. "And yet here you are, enjoying your indentured servitude."
Jane stands straighter. "I can leave any time I want to."
"So why haven't you?"
"Never had a reason to before," she clips sharply, daring him with her tone.
"And now?" he hears himself asking, quite beyond his control and quite unfearful of the threat of glare basking in the gradual narrowing of her round eyes. He's unwittingly testing her, displeasing her. It makes his knuckles bend, fingers sinking into palms, a fissure of awareness on the back of his neck.
He's quite a bit taller than her, isn't he? And she is rather beautiful, a wrathful demon in a pretty package.
He can't fathom why these thoughts are slipping through his brain, but they are and he doesn't seem to be able to control them - or himself.
"I still don't," she bites out, turning on her heel and stomping away from him.
Alistair wants to follow.
He doesn't, though it is a near thing.
o.o.o
o.o.o
Alistair finds himself watching for her, always noting where she is and when she is gone.
When she is away, he has time to wonder at his reaction to her, why she seems to inspire such an oddity of emotions that break through the bleakness of his existence, like sun through storm clouds.
o.o.o
o.o.o
Jane ruminates on their conversation - if it could even be called that.
It doesn't take her long to realize that he's oblivious and that he is the only one who is oblivious. Everyone else seems to know - even Bella teases her for it.
She fights the urge to touch him, her skin itching for his, when he is within her line of sight. Instead, she focuses entirely on her assigned task, fueled in equal parts by envy and ire.
o.o.o
o.o.o
And then comes the day of the battle and she is perched in a tall evergreen tree beside her brother, staring down at the purposeful arrangement of vampires with a critical eye - and with more than one check to the well-being of the apathetic idiot her soul had seen fit to claim as her own.
"Him?"
Jane closes her eyes for a second. "Shut up, Alec."
"No, seriously. Him? He's probably what drove Hemingway to suicide," Alec muses, swinging his legs to and fro, just like he did when they were children in Salem and climbing the weeping willow lining the edge of their backyard.
"He isn't…just be quiet, Alec," she says, shockingly unfit for a verbal tirade to amuse her twin. She's stressed about this entire ordeal, though she can't imagine why. Honestly, it's not the first time she and Alec have been the lynchpin in a battle plan and it certainly wouldn't be the last.
It must because he is down there and vulnerable.
Alec ignores her, as he is wont to do. "Not even Mistress Didyme would put a smile on his face, so what makes you think that - ouch!"
Jane blinks her eyes, releasing her gift from use. "I said shut up! Now isn't the time. We have work to do."
Alec shakes off the loitering pain of her influence, falling back on his familiar obnoxious observation, lips twisted with mirth. "Yes, but it helps that your mate is down there, doesn't it? You're more focused than ever, sister."
Jane narrowly avoids pushing him right off the thick branch they are balanced on and instead hisses, "Wait until you find your mate, you asshole. You'll rue this day."
It's a promise she intends to keep - nobody can hold a grudge like Jane when she really puts her mind to it and for all the grief her twin has been giving her, she is doubly inspired to recall this very moment for as long as it takes for him to stumble across whoever will be ill-fated enough to receive Alec as the second half of their soul.
Alec sneers.
Idle time is scarce after that. The plan for the battle begins without a hitch, going right as they had intended all along with blood luring the newborn army into a pocket that is difficult to defend, leaving them all easy pickings. But then it derails - the flame-haired bitch behind all of this nonsense escapes, and Bella and Edward dart off after them, leaving the allied vampires and werewolves open to Alec's gift and susceptible to her own. Dimitri and Felix cover each other's backs, blocking newborns from giving chase to Master Aro's heir, and twins are quick to follow suit. They are Volturi guards; it is vital that they are flexible in battle, and it is with little fanfare that they drop from their perch and slip right into the heat of the fray.
She keeps one eye on Alistair the entire time she and Alec tear newborns right in half -
Alistair is a good fighter - surprisingly so, actually - but he has left his back open to attack and two newborns are behind him in the blink of an eye, locking on an easier target.
Jane doesn't even think.
For the first time in her life, she turns away from Alec and toward someone else - toward someone more important than her own flesh and blood. She unleashes the full force of her gift onto the two newborns that would dare target her mate, volleying over the crush of battling bodies until she can rip the head right off of one, and then two, flinging limbs away from torsos with a single-minded intensity and a growl on her lips. Then she turns, gift still active while she narrows her gaze onto the vampire Alistair is fighting head-to-head; she brings the newborn to its knees, screeching and clutching at its head, while Alistair wastes no time with the opportunity that he has been given.
Three threats to him down, and Alistair turns to her with eyes a fraction wider -
And even in the midst of battle, she knows in an instant that he's finally gotten it.
o.o.o
o.o.o
Alistair finds her when the dust settles - he is compelled both by the inkling of a bond that he feels and by a perplexing interest in seeking absolution for his previous behavior. He's been a right bastard, insulting her sire to her face and belittling her occupation, but she'd still saved him.
He isn't the type to inspire loyalty in others, so there is only one reasonable explanation, only one possible thing he has been unwilling to entertain -
But even Alistair is not too jaded to acknowledge the mate that has been flitting and fluttering around him.
He finds her near the slow-rushing river cutting through Carlisle's territory. Jane stands with her back toward him, shoulders rigid as she cocks her ear to his approach, which he does not bother to hide. Her twin is absent, probably on purpose.
Alistair steps beside her, arm brushing against hers, a zing of electricity flashing over his skin. Inhale. Exhale. He musters his courage, then pivots, bowing his head to catch her eyes, even as he reaches up to brush his knuckle over the tender slope of her lips.
"I have been foolish," he says plainly.
"Are the willfully blind truly foolish?" she questions waspishly.
He deserves that, he supposes.
Alistair breathes deeply, trailing the back of his hand down her chin until he can cup the underside of her jaw, tilting her face upward until she must meet his gaze. He hopes his expression is as earnest as he feels, but he is not practiced in expressing anything except for a stated misanthropy and senses that he falls short, though she does soften minutely in response to whatever it is that does show in his countenance.
"Trust is not something that I have come by easily in this life. I was very young and naïve once, and burned both as a human and as a vampire by others who I thought I was able to trust," he murmurs, drawing her closer to his body, a natural instinct that he has no desire to curb. "I do not think that will change, and yet I have found that I trust no single soul except for yours, if you would have me."
Jane's answering kiss is intoxicating.
A/N: Not going to lie, I had fun with this outtake request. Crack-ships treated seriously are the best! That said, I took considerable artistic license with their characters, or at least their character backgrounds.
As always, be brutally honest. I can take it.
~cupcakeriot